Unfold: Dark Story - An Escape Game That Unfolds Before You

Watch the story literally spread out before you as you work your way through a series of puzzles! Unfold: Dark Story brings escape rooms to life with its innovative unfolding gameplay.

Published by Alley Cat Games and Red Cat Games, Dark Story is part of a new line of puzzle games.

Gameplay

Unfold: Dark Story essentially all fits inside an envelope and you fold out connected pages as you go through the story. Each set of pages presents you with a puzzle, and you cannot unfold the next set of pages until you have solved the puzzle on the current set.

For each puzzle, there are a series of flaps you can fold back. Each flap has a potential answer to the puzzle written across its back. These answers are all various numerical values. When you believe you have the numerical answer to a puzzle, you open the flap that has that number written across it. If there is a red circle behind the flap, the answer is wrong and you must try again. If it is green, then the answer is correct and you can unfold the next flap of the story.

Each puzzle also has a flap you can open for a hint, and an additional flap to open if you just want the answer.

Your final score is based on how long it took you to solve all the puzzles, as well as how many hints or answers you had to look up.

Review

Unfold: Dark Story’s design makes it feel unique. The unfolding of the pages as you work your way through the puzzles is both fun and also has some practical benefits. The game is quite compact when all folded up, which makes it easy to put in a suitcase or slip into a purse. It’s also just visually satisfying to watch the way the game unfolds and spreads out.

We found the puzzles themselves to be quite enjoyable. They were not as a whole too difficult, but they offered some fun problems to tackle, and we never felt frustrated or lost. While there wasn't any particular puzzle that really blew us away, there were some fun set pieces and the result was an enjoyable whole.

This is a puzzle game that can be passed on to a friend when you are done. You do have to do a little extra work to make sure it’s not clear what the answers are, but it’s doable. The artwork is also well done and the game just has a great aesthetic.

The story is fun, but is left unresolved at the end — presumably making room for sequels. It does also feel like the designers could have included clever and unique puzzles that take more advantage of the folding format. It’s a neat mechanic, and hopefully in future entries in the series more is done to blend this concept into the puzzles themselves.

It's no secret that there are a number of escape room games on the market right now. Unfold: Dark Story might not be the strongest one, but it certainly was a fun one and the series is hopefully only beginning. This was a good starting point and very promising for things to come.

Pros: The unfolding is fun and satisfying, packs up extremely compact, atmospheric

Cons: Story is left a little unresolved, it feels like a little bit more could have been made of the unfolding mechanic

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.